Review of American Pacificism: Oceania in the US Imagination, by Paul Lyons (original) (raw)
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Syllabus, 2013
What does literature do? How does it move the mind? Incite the imagination? In “The Mirror and the Mask,” Borges writes about a storyteller who tells three tales in three different literary modes. It is the argument of this course that form invites a certain manner of thinking. What does each form do? To contemplate this question further we will engage the historical, in particular the historical social circumstances that enable different forms. We will explore the transnational connections amongst different literatures, regions, and languages of the Americas, imagined collectively as the “New World.” We will study a range of fiction and nonfiction texts that explore issues of power, identity and history in colonial times and their effects in the postcolonial period. The comparatist perspective of the course invites attention to the historical contexts for the emergence of (trans)national New World identities and discussions of literary exchange and influence across the Americas. We will raise such questions as: How does literature play a role in constructing people’s visions of the world? In what traditions do the texts we read participate? How do those traditions overlap and differ? We will address these questions by reading several texts from the “New World,” situating the texts with respect to one another, as well as texts from the “Old World.” Our readings will explore themes such as discovery and conquest, “the discovery self makes of the other,” romance, revolution, slavery and dictatorships (Todorov 3). We will examine how particular literary texts and genres are shaped by and intervene in these histories.
The Cambridge Companion to American Novelists. Cambridge University Press, 2013
This Companion examines the full range and vigor of the American novel. From the American exceptionalism of James Fenimore Cooper to the apocalyptic post-Americanism of Cormac McCarthy, these newly commissioned essays from leading scholars and critics chronicle the major aesthetic innovations that have shaped the American novel over the past two centuries. The essays evaluate the work, life, and legacy of influential American novelists including Melville, Twain, James, Wharton, Cather, Faulkner, Ellison, Pynchon, and Morrison, while situating them within the context of their literary predecessors and successors. The volume also highlights less familiar, though equally significant writers such as Theodore Dreiser and Djuna Barnes, providing a balanced and wide-ranging survey of use to students, teachers, and general readers of American literature. Table of Contents Introduction Timothy Parrish 1. James Fenimore Cooper Stephen Railton 2. Nathaniel Hawthorne Robert Milder 3. Herman Melville Clark Davis 4. Harriet Beecher Stowe Arthur Riss 5. Mark Twain Peter Messent 6. Henry James Thomas J. Otten 7. Edith Wharton Pamela Knights 8. Theodore Dreiser Clare Eby 9. Willa Cather Timothy Parrish 10. F. Scott Fitzgerald Ruth Prigozy 11. Ernest Hemingway Eugene Goodheart 12. William Faulkner Philip Weinstein 13. Henry Roth Hana Wirth-Nesher 14. Djuna Barnes Alex Goody 15. Zora Neale Hurston Lovalerie King 16. Richard Wright William Dow 17. Raymond Chandler Leonard Cassuto 18. Ralph Ellison David Yaffe 19. J. D. Salinger Sarah Graham 20. Patricia Highsmith Joan Schenkar 21. Vladimir Nabokov Julian W. Connoly 22. Jack Kerouac Joshua Kupetz 23. Saul Bellow Victoria Aarons 24. Kurt Vonnegut Todd Davis 25. John Updike James Schiff 26. Thomas Pynchon David Seed 27. Toni Morrison Valerie Smith 28. Philip Roth Debra Shostak 29. Don DeLillo Thomas Heise 30. Cormac McCarthy Brian Evenson Guide to further reading Index.
History of American Literature: Facts and Fiction
Prateek Books, 2024
The author takes great pleasure in providing the students of American Literature and English Literature; in general, the present work entitled ‘History of American Literature: Facts and Fiction’. The book carries a number of merits and unique features of its own. The treatment is elaborate and comprehensive and the style is lucid and simple but dignified. The present book is equipped with not only the history of American Literature but also a detailed study of the texts prescribed in the course by MJPR University, Bareilly. It vehemently surveys and covers the entire field of American Literature- from the time when Columbus and the Early Settlers wrote their ‘letters home’ down to the present age when the American literary scene is characterized by extreme diversity and complexity. The history of literature has been divided into ages and periods keeping in view the convenience of the students. Major authors and their works have been given as detailed and comprehensive a treatment as possible within the limited scope of a work of this nature. The matter has been meticulously arranged in a chronological order and all superfluity and complexity has been done away with. To capture the history of a past era is not possible without the help of the previous existing records and texts; the author owes its minutest details to the web sites which proved a source of information and feels highly indebted towards it. It is hoped that the book would fully meet the requirements of the examinees in Indian universities and colleges. In a long work involving many continuous hours; some lapses and lacunas are inevitable. Suggestions are duly invited which will be incorporated in the new edition